This paper is about the new methods and metrics used in industry and business today striving for better revenues and larger market shares. It investigates the relations between the old fordistic and tayloristic way of manufacturing and compares it to the models used in industry today for being competitive, seeking to please customers and becoming more flexible. More specific the paper is about if Six Sigma and lean production are the key for succeeding these days. SKF:s factory in Gothenburg and other companies will make an example for how these methods are used in practice.The aim is to try to answer if these systems with inherited tools and methods are the right way to get the flexibility that is needed for being able to deliver the right goods to customers and market. For a company to be flexible decisions must be made fast and needed changes must be able to be done easy and without too large costs and investments.

For young people today the ability to read and interpret text seems to be of decreasing standard. This bachelor thesis is trying to find patterns among five different library patrons, all adults and most of them readers for life. The specific aims are, through their individual stories, to find out what made and helped them become readers of literature for enjoyment and pleasure. How do they look upon themselves as readers, how do they find their reading and finally which role does it play in their everyday lives. Five semi-structured interviews have been conducted in a qualitative way and been put through a thematic-narrative analysis.The avid readers of this study all read throughout their lives and almost right from the beginning read a lot.

The increased travelling of today makes nodes along travelling routes more and more important. This is very much the case of petrol stations. They constitute important nodes in the road network, filling up thirsty fuel tanks and hungry stomachs, guiding road users and providing vehicle-services. In this thesis the role of the petrol station for road users was investigated in order to find out if the petrol station was a potential hot spot. We performed an ethnographic field study at a petrol station and found that a great number of visitor activities took place at the petrol station.

Höggeröd på nordöstra Orust är ett vackert fritidsområde med en tidstypisk karaktär från sextiotalet som är värd att bevara. Ett problem som uppstått på senare år är att husägarna vill flytta in permanent i sina fritidsstugor och bygga ut dessa till större och mer funktionella villor, men detta godkänner inte detaljplanen. Samtidigt finns en önskan om att kunna lösa detta ändå och göra alla delaktiga parter nöjda. Syftet med rapporten är att uppmana till en fördjupad diskussion om Höggeröds fritidshusområde och frågan om hur dessa skall utvecklas och samtidigt bevaras. Frågan om vilka krav och lagar som gäller kring ombyggnationer har även besvarats för att kunna göra ett så bra underlag som möjligt.För att kunna bevara detta kulturarv så kommer ett underlag till en bevarandeplan att tas fram med hjälp av den här rapporten.

An often encountered problem when implementing a mass flow regulator in a rolling mill is the one with measurement of speed. The most widely used solution is to fit a pulse counter to a wheel that is in contact with the strip. Common problems with this design are for instance scratch marks on the strip and problems with the flatness measuring system.  One way of circumventing the aforementioned problems would be a non-contact measuring system. The market of today only offers systems based on the Doppler principle.This report evaluates three different systems for non-contact speed measurement. Important areas in the evaluation have been the ability to operate under normal rolling conditions, integration in existing control system and how well the sensor can be fitted to the rolling mill.

An often encountered problem when implementing a mass flow regulator in a rolling mill is the one with measurement of speed. The most widely used solution is to fit a pulse counter to a wheel that is in contact with the strip. Common problems with this design are for instance scratch marks on the strip and problems with the flatness measuring system.  One way of circumventing the aforementioned problems would be a non-contact measuring system. The market of today only offers systems based on the Doppler principle.This report evaluates three different systems for non-contact speed measurement. Important areas in the evaluation have been the ability to operate under normal rolling conditions, integration in existing control system and how well the sensor can be fitted to the rolling mill.

Tacit knowledge refers to the knowledge that is located inside individuals; it is not expressed or written like explicit knowledge. Inherently, tacit knowledge is often limited solely to one person and consequently individually based. Project based companies need to acknowledge the importance of transforming tacit knowledge into explicit in order to preserve the knowledge inside the organisation. If the knowledge is not transformed, there is a great risk of losing the knowledge when a key individual leaves the organization.One way of transforming the tacit knowledge is through Nonaka?s and Takeuchi?s knowledge spiral.

Deliberative democracy theory has been prominent within political science research since the early 1990?s, often applied in studies on postnational democratic constellations, in particular the European Union. Of the main institutions of the union, the European Parliament stands out as somewhat understudied from this point of view, which is why the main aim of this thesis is to study the conditions for deliberative democracy in the European Parliament.From deliberative democratic theory four criteria have been selected to function as methodological framework in analysing the institutional structure and proceedings of the parliament. Each of the criteria is applied separately to the practice and function of the plenary sessions, the parliamentary committees and the political groups. The analysis shows that the conditions for deliberative democracy differ between the three fora, as do their respective roles in parliament, but all in all they supplement each other.

This thesis investigates lacks in today?s use of the ERP-system Mapaz Affärssystem inthe production planning at Solna Pressgjuteri, and possible improvements. Today thedates calculated by the program to plan the orders are inaccurate and the ordersequence is not optimal, and therefore continuous manual corrections are needed.The approach was to study the program Mapaz to understand how it works, andidentify available parameters for input and output in the different tools offered in theprogram. By studying old lists of planned orders and relevant parameters in Mapaz forindividual orders, production groups, products and operations, the connectionbetween input and output parameters could be understood.Participating in planning meetings and discussions with the company behind theERP-system identified the current usage, desideratum and possibilities with theavailable tools. These were then matched to describe the reasons to the insufficientplanning and form possible actions for improvement.The work has showed poor understanding for the ERP-system and its functions, assome tools intended to assist the planning were not used, and some even usedincorrectly.

At present Getinge can offer a new generation of trolleys that they produced in 2011. The trolley used to Getinge various autoclaves and has the primary task to help the user/sterilization personnel to transport shelves or baskets, with or without cargo, from a packing table to the autoclave. The purpose of this thesis has been to develop a primary solution how the docking process between Getinge trolleys and autoclaves can be improved. The work has in most part followed Fredy Olsson principle and primary construction method. The work has included product research, study visit and development of a requirements specification, to satisfy Getinge, their clients and circumvention products requirements.

This report gives an overview of applications of the Greenroads rating system whichin turn is an environmental review system for roads. The focus of this report isapplications during the construction phase, ie on solutions which adhere to theentrepreneur's area of responsibility as opposed to the designer's. The study was undertaken in cooperation with Skanska (a global contractor andFortune 500 company) which provided a project suitable for an exemplatory study ofGreenroads. Please note that the project in particular was not specifically designedwith Greenroads in mind. Therefore and because of that the site provided anexcellent opportunity to study effects of application contra non-application. The approach of this study was to first review the system, thereafter to performinterviews with key personel at the site in different roles as to receive different viewsof selected points of application. Selected possibilities of application are cathegorizedand presented with comments and suggestions for adoption. Lastly Greenroads is briefly compared to the rating system which today is the mostwidely used by Skanska, LEED.

The Production Manager at Atlas Copco AB Craelius wants to adopt a lean approach to become more competitive. This thesis is an exploratory study of the subject and what it means for the business activity and its implementation process.The objective is to provide a basic understanding of lean to the company, and what this means for Atlas Copco AB Craelius. The report describes the industrial revolution in brief. This is because the company itself must understand where certain ways of looking at production management is derived from. Furthermore, it provides an understanding of Lean's origins.

This examination paper is a lead in the educational program Industrial Management at Jönköping University. The paper itself contains an analysis of the warehouse organisation and its efficiency at the furniture company Voice AB in Torsvik, just south of Jönköping, Sweden. The report also contains propositions to raise the level of efficiency in the company warehouse and warehouse management.In the investigation of the warehouse a number of possible improvements were found. Examples are lack of a system for labelling shelves and racks, lack of an efficient location system and development possibilities in work routines. For the empirical investigation both qualitative and quantitative methods ware used.

People play games now more than ever before. While the digital gaming industry dominates the market, boardgaming has been living in its shadow. Board games offer a physical tangibility and a social experience that can be found in few digital games. How do we create a tool that further builds upon those strengths? The purpose of this study is to examine the possibility of developing a service that consists of an mobile application and board game events to promote social face-to-face interaction. Focus has been on the social face-to-face interaction in the context of a board game session.

In most software engineering project, users are only involved in the beginning of the project as a help to design the requirements specification but users can be involved after this phase too, but is it effective to do so? With this report we would like to investigate how effective it is to involve users after the requirements specification has been written and approved. To find out how effective it is to involve the users we try some fast and simple involvement techniques on a quite far gone project. These techniques include ethnographic studies, prototypes and surveys. We also interviewed a couple of people who work with usability and finally delivered a report with our results to them to find out if they found our result relevant.